Abbey in Washington state includes U.S.-born, fully ordained, female clergy

Religion News Service

Published 5:26 pm, Friday, May 11, 2012

NEWPORT, Wash. — There aren't a lot of Buddhists in America — around 3 million or so, according to the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. There isn't exactly an abundance of monasteries here either, let alone Buddhist clergy.

Yet just outside of this town of about 21,000 people, Sravasti Abbey sits as one of the only monastic communities in the West for Americans wishing to study the Buddha's teachings. What's even more unusual is that the abbey has five U.S.-born, fully ordained nuns, called bhikshunis.

With the five nuns in place, official sanghakarmas (Sangha ceremonies) can be held at the abbey, including the twice-monthly private Posadha (ceremony of confession and restoration of precepts). To have the special rites, the abbey needed four bhikshunis. By this summer, the abbey expects to have six.

"When we first set up the abbey there were three residents, myself and two cats. Now we have two cats and 12 human residents, five of them bhikshunis," said Venerable Thubten Chodron, the abbess of Sravasti Abbey.

Chodron founded the abbey in 2003, fulfilling her lifelong dream of creating a Tibetan Buddhist community in the U.S. She spent a decade as resident teacher at Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle, but had no monastic community to call her own. Originally from Los Angeles, Chodron became a bhikshuni in 1986. Like most Buddhist women, she had to travel to Taiwan to be ordained.

For full ordination, a quorum of 10 fully ordained monks and 10 fully ordained nuns must be present; the Sangha (Buddhist monastic community) must have at least 10 years experience as fully ordained monastics, according to Chinese tradition. "Our goal is, hopefully, that sometime in the future we'll have enough monks and nuns at the abbey to give the ordination ourselves," she said.

Venerable Thubten Jigme, 60, and Venerable Thubten Chonyi, 58, traveled together to Taiwan last October to partake in the full ordination ceremony, where they took vows. Both women gave up their careers and possessions to become first-generation, home-grown monastics.